Tanya Oxtoby has a difficult task: finding balance. The balance between managing a Northern Ireland team in transition and winning, the balance between experience and youth in a squad and the balance between being a manager and a mother.
The 42-year-old Australian has been with Northern Ireland since September 2023 but, in international management, where time with players is condensed, a year is not a long time. The team face the first leg of their playoff against Croatia on Friday as they try to qualify for the Euros for the second time. Get past Croatia and the winner of the tie between Albania and Norway awaits, with a place in the finals in Switzerland next summer up for grabs.
“The hardest thing to do when you’re a team in transition is to continue to win because you want to implement the playing style, you want to slowly start to implement some changes that are going to have a positive impact but, ultimately, we’re judged on results,” Oxtoby says.
There has been no room to breathe with a Nations League campaign followed by Euro 2025 qualifying. That has meant being experimental in competitive fixtures. At the end of November 2022, the average age of the team was 27.2. In July’s game against Bosnia and Herzegovina it was 23.8 and there were no players over 30 in the starting lineup.
“It’s about really understanding whether the player is ready,” says Oxtoby. “We’ve got really talented young players coming through the system, but there’s other aspects they have to have ready to come into our environment, in terms of the standards we set for ourselves.
“You look at Keri Halliday, you look at Casey Howe, they’ve come in and they’re brilliant. They’re not just brilliant on the pitch, they have the accountability piece off the pitch, the drive and the want to be better and to reach their potential. They’re the type of younger players we want.”
Building for the future is a non-negotiable. “We want to set ourselves up for long-term success because we don’t just want to be qualifying for major tournaments. When we get there we want to be successful, we want to be able to compete, we want to be able to have people look at us and go: ‘Wow, look at this team, they’re playing a great style of football and they’re effective in what they do with the resources they have.’ So probably the hardest part is trying to get that balance right between building towards that and winning games now.”
There are few better places to learn how to strike that balance than Chelsea, where Oxtoby was an assistant before taking this job. Under Emma Hayes, they perfected the art of winning regardless of which phase the squad was in. “I went to Chelsea to learn how to win and to work out what that looks like. I don’t think there’s any better place to do that,” says Oxtoby. “I also learned from the support Emma gave me as a mum. She taught me that you’ve got a responsibility to do the same for other people.”
Oxtoby accepted the Northern Ireland job in part for better work/family balance. “We always strive for balance, but you’re never going to get it,” she says. “Unfortunately, or fortunately, however you look at it, being a mum and being a football manager are two full-time jobs. Unless you are a parent, you don’t understand that you do a day’s work before you even do a day’s work and then you do a day’s work after you’ve done a day’s work.
“I want to be the best mum – that’s the most important thing in the world to me – and it’s a lot of the reason why I shifted from club football to international football, because I wanted to be more present at home and I wanted to be able to give my son more of myself. But I also love what I do. I have the two best jobs in the world, but I want to be amazing at both of them. International football allows me to do that. When I’m home, I can be present. When I’m away for 10-11 days at a time, I’m immersed in that.”
The former Bristol City manager has seen in action the values of the Irish Football Association, which attracted her to the role. When her son, Albie, was ill, she was told to put family first. “I was able to join the group a day later and we didn’t miss a beat. That’s the environment you want to be in as a mum. My responsibility is to make sure that I show those same behaviours and that support to the staff and team.”
Having someone in a position of power who understands the demands of having children is important. “Being a parent doesn’t inhibit or impact performance – high performance – I think it enhances it,” Oxtoby says. “If you are happy, you feel valued, and you feel like you can be yourself you’re going to give more of yourself to the journey
“We had Albie running around before our Montenegro Nations League promotion/relegation playoff. He was playing hide and seek in the store cupboards at the hotel on match day and it’s a nice distraction. The players are playing table tennis with him.
“You’re sitting around, you’re waiting for the game, you’ve done all your prep. After lunch you’re heading into that mode where you’re starting to focus but in the morning it’s the right time. It’s thinking about the right timing and making sure that everybody’s comfortable with that. I genuinely think it’s a great thing. And the door’s always open.
“It’s the same for a lot of our players that play across the water; a lot of the time they only get to see their families when they’re back over with us. So there’s scope and time for them to sit downstairs and have a coffee and catch-up. That’s important. It’s about balance, it’s about mental health, it’s making sure you’re in a really good wellbeing space. I’m all about that.”
Croatia, 12 places below Northern Ireland in the Fifa rankings, provide the next test of how well the team are managing their balancing acts. Oxtoby is using as motivation the feeling the players had on qualifying for the 2022 Euros.
“Once you’ve had a taste of it, you want more. I remember the first camp I came in and I asked the playing group: ‘What was that like for you?’ Because, externally, I could kind of feel it, and you could see the excitement in their eyes.”
